Widgets are programs that provide information from the Internet and/or other communication means to a user through web and/or other services, and run on televisions and/or user equipment associated with televisions. Television widgets are widgets that run strictly on the hardware platform (e.g., control circuitry) of a television. Typically, television widgets have limited interactions with external user equipment, such as set top boxes. Further, television widgets have a limited amount of resources available to, for example, determine what content is being displayed on the television.
End-users, service providers, and/or other third parties generally have different preferences and views regarding profane, indecent, political, or violent content. However, current systems censor content at a service provider before the content reaches an end-user. This produces content that may be censored too much or too little, depending on an individual user's preferences.
Thus, a system which can provide customizable censoring operations that may be performed at the user's equipment can solve the inflexibility of current systems. However, performing censoring operations at a user's equipment creates many challenges in synchronizing censoring operations to content being displayed on the user equipment. Accordingly, there is a need for television widgets that overcome these limitations to provide these services. In particular, there is a need for a television widget that can overcome the challenges in synchronization and accurately obscure objectionable content being displayed on a user's equipment based on user-defined preferences.